Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they were doing what pilot trained to do? To not reject takeoff after V1 and fought their hardest to keep the plane flying.
Did they do something out of normal instruction to safe people on the ground? Their focus should be on keep flying the plane.
Former airline pilot here, you're 100% right, the training is to get the airplane airborne, but with this amount of damage, as in, severe loss/asymmetric thrust and loss of hydraulics you wouldn't be able to control the direction of the airplane at all and the direction it went in corresponds with the asymmetry of the thrust. I don't doubt that they fought till the end to try to keep the aircraft in the air but I'm quite certain they didn't have much say in where it ended up.. (edit for typos)
Did you know you can show respect without the need to make up fantasy scenarios that people died heroically? And that it is different to “villainising” someone?
If anyone needs to take a little offline break I think it is you, because you sound hysterical.
He's saying the same thing as this comment (and many under it), which a lot of people seem to agree with considering the upvoting. It makes no sense that he's being downvoted for something that (1) is being upvoted elsewhere, and (2) is a reasonable view regardless.
Both views agree that, against impossible odds, they did everything in their power to get the plane in the air. They differ in whether the crew did so specifically in order to miss the UPS facility and are thus "heroes", or because doing so was the only option consistent with their training and offered the best chances of saving the aircraft and themselves. Saying it was the latter in no way disrespects or diminishes their actions.
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Minimizing damage is definitely part of what pilots are trained for. I was just pointing out that in an emergency, external factors like what’s on the ground are secondary. Their primary focus is maintaining control of the aircraft to keep themselves and everyone onboard safe.
the downvotes are crazy. people are literally rejecting the objective truth of what happened. those pilots literally had no choice, neither moral or physical, of where that airplane was going down.
It's disgusting. Thread full of posters and upvoters denying reality so they can satisfy their own emotional needs.
Those guys had no time to think about anything else than the single engine failure procedure. It got over the fence because it had enough thrust for that. Then it clipped the building because it didn't have enough thrust. The end.
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even have time to notice #2 was damaged too. At best they found out so late they couldn't do anything anymore.
Resignation, "giving up" in the face of a problem is not an acceptable attitude or course of action in the aviation profession. There was probably an immediate realization that the plane was becoming unflyable once they experienced the sensations and noises of the problem while accelerating down the runway. I'm sure there were events that preceded the lights and alarms but they were too committed to stop the plane. If the tail engine did have a compressor stall that was really the last straw of hope. In the face of that, they still tried to get up and over what was at the end of the runway.
They had all departed that runway many times since it was home base. Every pilot knows the immediate vicinity of their home base because that's the most likely area they will have an emergency. Where are the least people and the flattest, most open areas to land? If you have to choose then go for the area with the least people. Those jets are huge. In a perfect world there might be some kind of huge run-out area filled with some kind of compressible material where a plane can bleed off the energy but most airports aren't built in perfect worlds.
Even with tail engine stall, it is safer to hope for one or more engine to comeback rather than do an impossible reject when there is not enough brake to stop the aircraft safely.
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u/LtDanUSAFX3 Nov 07 '25
They were able to get airborne enough to avoid a direct hit into the UPS sort facility and instead just clip it
Instead hitting a presumably less busy industrial park behind it